Response to Glyn-Williams

Gianni Vattimo

Santiago Zabala

pp. 191-192

in: Silvia Mazzini, Owen Glyn-Williams (eds), Making communism hermeneutical, Berlin, Springer, 2017

Abstract

The essence of Glyn-Williams' insightful contribution is embodied in the beautiful epigraph ("Phases of a revolution are not decided in parliaments, they are only registered there") by C.L.R. James. In the spirit of this great historian and political activist, Glyn-Williams suggests that we have given too much significance to the role that Chavez, Morales and other leaders played in Latin American politics, leaving aside those grassroots movements which created them. The "absence of grassroots, constituent power from their consideration of a region in which such powers have reached an extraordinary level of intensity" has inevitably presented the "Latin American people as passive beneficiaries of benevolent rulers."